Byron Shire Council is currently building a roundabout on Bayshore Drive to service the shopping centre and TAFE. Currently, travelling from Ewingsdale Road, to get to Bay Fair shops, people have to drive across the TAFE grass, head north to Sunrise Boulevard, go around a temporary roundabout there to make the U-turn for the approach to the shops’ car park.
This temporary roundabout is about four metres in diameter. It is made of sandbags with six one-metre high plastic hi-vis poles. It would cost about $1,000 for the bags and poles and probably took two Council workers a maximum of four hours to install. With work hours costing, say $400, we have a perfectly-working roundabout for the cost of $1,400.
The Ross Street roundabout cost $2 million, the Ewingsdale debacle more than $5 million, the badly-designed and inefficient Grevillea/Bayshore Drive roundabout about $2 million and the new one at TAFE, $2 million.
Yes, there is more infrastructure needed for roundabouts, but the fact this one is ‘functioning’ shows that millions of dollars are wasted on roundabouts.
Go check out the $1,400 roundabout. It works!
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